346 . PHILOSOPHY OF STORMS. 



Water Spouts. 



[From the Philadelphia Saturday Chronicle.] 



182. A gentleman has handed us the following extract of 

 a letter, which he received last summer from a friend who 

 is in the habit of visiting the West India Islands, dated 



At Sea, August 14th, 1836. 



IC Captain ! Spouts over the lee bow ! " cried the voice of 

 a sailor down the companion ladder, yesterday, at two, 

 P. M., while sailing along the Gulf stream, in about lati- 

 tude 25 30'. 



What a singular and yet awful part of the ocean is the 

 Gulf of Florida ! The waters are here everlastingly rush- 

 ing from the Caribbean sea and Gulf of Mexico, towards 

 the more northern Atlantic ; and they roll in a stream or 

 volume of unfathomable depth, varying from eighty to a 

 hundred miles in breadth, and being from six to ten degrees 

 warmer than the waters on either side. Sometimes the 

 stream travels at two knots an hour, sometimes at four, and 

 sometimes it runs, in places, with the velocity of a mill tail. 

 Storms, squalls, hurricanes, water spouts, lightning and 

 thunder, give continual and terrific variety to this stupen- 

 dous ocean current. Truly, it is grand, in the deep silence 

 of a calm midnight, to pace the deck, and listen to the 

 roaring, rushing noise of the Gulf stream, as it travels on 

 its ceaseless course. Though this noise is partly unac- 

 countable, yet it is mighty as the roaring of a cataract 

 ay, even of the Falls of Niagara. But to return to my 

 subject. 



The cry of " Spouts over the lee bow" naturally excited 

 some little alarm amongst the passengers. The captain was 

 on deck in a moment. I was anxious to witness the mag- 

 nificient phenomena, and therefore followed him. On our 

 arrival there, the spectacle presented by the heavens to lee- 



